It sure has taken a while, but there is now an official Wikipedia Mobile iPhone app, produced by the Wikimedia Foundation. There are a number of other very good Wikipedia apps available for the iPhone “ one that I ‘ve used for some time is Wiki Mobile “ but it is nice to see an official version emerge from the folks who have been providing our friendly online encyclopedia online for so long.
It also uses 100% open source code, and is ‘community built ‘ “ which is nice to see.
I ‘ve only spent a very short while with the new Wikipedia Mobile app so far. Here are a few instant impressions, and some screencaps of what you ‘ll find in it:
The layout is fairly basic “ the screencap at the top of this post shows the main page for ‘iPhone ‘. As you scroll down through text and images on the main result page, you also have sections to expand out covering specific sub-topics “ like Hardware for the iPhone:
The app also has a Home page, which is easy to return to at any point via the upward arrow icon on the bottom bar. On the home page, there are daily featured stories
And an In The News section
Gratuitous UT Tower lit up in burnt orange to celebrate another title shot:
The App Store description for Wikipedia Mobile says it aims to be ‘very simple and very fast ‘. Thus far, I ‘d have to say it is achieving the first part of that goal, but not yet the second. There are places where the app feels relatively slow “ on loading of some pages / views, and even when typing in the search filed at times.
For now this feels like another worthwhile Wikipedia app for the iPhone, but probably not the best on offer as yet. Hopefully with strong community support, the app may develop into one of the very best though.
You can find Wikipedia Mobile in the App Store now, and it is free.
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TAGS: iphone apps
